Fluid pumps, and more particularly fuel pumps for pumping fuel, for example, from a fuel tank of a motor vehicle to an internal combustion engine of the motor vehicle, are known. It is common for the fuel pump to be part of a fuel delivery module which includes a fuel reservoir defining a reserve fuel volume within the fuel tank. The fuel pump is located within the fuel reservoir, thereby ensuring that the fuel pump is exposed to fuel even when the fuel within the fuel tank is low or may shift within the fuel tank due to the motor vehicle operating on an incline or due to the motor vehicle navigating a turn at high speed. Such fuel pumps commonly include a fuel strainer connected to an inlet of the fuel pump in order to prevent foreign matter that may be present in the fuel from entering the fuel pump where the foreign matter may have undesirable consequences on the operation and durability of the fuel pump and other components such as fuel injectors that are downstream of the fuel pump. Examples of fuel pumps with strainers are described in U.S. Pat. No. 7,757,672 to Villaire et al. and U.S. Pat. No. 8,460,542 to Oku et al. The fuel strainer must provide sufficient filtering area in order to accommodate the flow of the fuel pump, however, due to packaging constraints, it is often difficult to provide a fuel strainer with sufficient filtering area in the available space while remaining simple and economical to manufacture. Furthermore, fuel strainers can be susceptible to plugging when diesel fuel is the fuel to be pumped because diesel fuel is subject to gelling or crystallizing at low temperatures. When diesel fuel gels, the fuel strainer may become clogged and the fuel pump becomes starved of fuel, thereby providing an insufficient flow of fuel to the internal combustion engine.
What is needed is a fuel pump and strainer which minimizes or eliminates one or more of the shortcomings as set forth above.